I was invited by the Rethink­ing Eco­nom­ics stu­dent asso­ci­a­tion at the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics to give a talk about Greece, Aus­ter­ity, Post Key­ne­sian Eco­nom­ics and antic­i­pat­ing the cri­sis. There was an excel­lent audi­ence of around 150 for the talk, and a good dis­cus­sion after­wards: the stu­dents there are keen (par­don the pun) to learn about non-Neoclassical approaches to eco­nom­ics, which are taught at Kingston Uni­ver­sity, but which they said they do not learn from their courses at the LSE itself.

I was inter­viewed last night on the BBC News Chan­nel about the Greek cri­sis. Nego­ti­a­tions today seem to have bought some breath­ing space, but the issues raised here will now become dom­i­nant. Hav­ing gar­nered a 4 month exten­sion and time to rede­fine the macro­eco­nomic aspects of the EU pack­age, Syriza will now have to carry the day with its con­stituency and polit­i­cal rivals back in Greece.

There is one truly remark­able thing about all three arti­cles: not one of them con­tains the word “Bank”.

Now you may think it’s ridicu­lous that an econ­o­mist could dis­cuss the macro­eco­nom­ics of debt, not once but three times, and never even con­sider the role of banks. But Krug­man would tell you whyyou don’t need to con­sider banks when talk­ing about debt, and call you a “Bank­ing Mys­tic” if you persisted.

Video overview

Debunking Economics II

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